What are Subscription Companies? Subscription merchants are companies with a business model that involves customers paying a recurring fee to access products or serv...

In a world that seems ever more risky - with digital scam artists everywhere you look, and ransomware in seemingly every other news report - making security as impen...

If there’s one thing that everyone who’s ever sold anything can agree on it’s this: the harder it is for the customer to close a deal, the less likely it is that the...

As the payments industry continues to grow, expand, and evolve, payments professionals will need to stay abreast of the changes in order to remain competitive in the...

Modern businesses do more than simply make one-off sales of products - they take advantage of the opportunities our digital reality offers. Perhaps the inspiration f...

The payment landscape continues to expand each year, offering a vast array of payment methods for end users and processing options for merchants. Payment gateways, p...

Merchants wishing to offer secure payment solutions for customers may find themselves at an impasse: their payment flows may require additional steps to become compl...

Failed payments are a key performance indicator for merchants that offer subscription, or installment, payment products or services. That’s because, when a consumer’...

The subscription model - paying for the use of a product or service on a regular basis, rather than purchasing an item outright - has been around for hundreds of yea...

When this video was recorded, Shopify Payment App documentation was in its early stages and only depicted Ruby code samples.

We came back from a long but eventful week at Merchant Risk Council's annual conference in Las Vegas. This year, it ran from March 25 until March 28 and was jam-pack...

What are Fintech Companies? Fintech is a broad term (shortened from financial technology) that encompasses technologies aiming to improve, simplify, or modernize fin...

When merchants accept credit card payments, they also must consider what happens after the transaction is authorized. Can they store the card data? Should they?

In an increasingly competitive marketplace, it is vital to remove every little bit of friction that can cause a consumer not to complete a purchase. Friction can inc...

For centuries, payments have been “bundled”. Large multinational institutions have led the way in banking, money, payments, investments, and more, becoming large fin...

In our thoroughly networked world, many are constantly glued to their mobile devices, devouring the musings, postings, and comments that are the lifeblood of social ...

In today’s digital, virtual world, there are vanishingly few businesses remaining who can operate on a cash basis - everyone has to accept digital payments, like cre...

In a digital and connected world, data is the most valuable virtual commodity. Access to, and control of, data is a fiercely competitive and much-debated area of mod...

Any time a credit card transaction occurs, the payment carries detailed data along with it to better classify and analyze the purchase. The amount and type of data i...

Merchants use batch payment processing to submit multiple transactions at once, rather than in real-time as the payment details come in, generally to reduce fees and...

When planning to accept payments, integrating and going live quickly can ensure a smooth and swift road to generating revenue. Hosted payment pages can offer merchan...

Today’s economy is increasingly driven by complex purchases: beyond the exchange of cash for an item in a retail store, we have become accustomed to making digital o...

E-commerce, by its very nature, is international, which opens the door for a global customer base. Opting to accept global payments can ensure that merchants can off...

In the world of payments, selecting partners to help transact business is one of the most complex, but critical, processes any business can complete. Choosing the ri...

Total processing volume (also known as total payment volume, or TPV) is the sum of all payments passed through a specific payment processor over a given period of ti...

As businesses grow, the complexities of keeping up with the money that flows in and out of their accounts start to pile up. The solution is to optimize payment opera...

Online dating and related services are booming globally, with demand increasing at a rapid pace. The market for online dating and apps was valued at $7.94 billion in...

According to the industry group PYMNTS, failed payments cost subscription merchants as much as 9% - 11% of their revenue. While some of that revenue loss represents ...

Companies that fall under the MCC category of “digital games” include the merchants that sell and distribute digital games or game-related products. More specificall...

A token requestor ID (TRID) is a unique identifier that allows merchants to request network tokens from token providers and is a prerequisite for enabling network to...

Negative option merchants are merchants that offer an enticing option for customers, like a free trial, that requires a credit card to sign up. The customer, in turn...

Like so many full-service payment providers, Stripe offers an apparently very simple proposition: run all your payment transactions through their system and pay a si...

Triangulation fraud is a complicated fraud scheme that occurs, predominantly in ecommerce, between three parties: an unsuspecting customer, a fraudulent seller, and ...

Tokens: What is a Token Vault? A token is a non-exploitable identifier that references sensitive data. Tokens can take any shape, are safe to expose, and are easy to...

Payments become delinquent when they are not made according to a pre-agreed schedule. Almost by definition, then, they are almost always associated with recurring pa...

What is Payments Vaulting? Merchants are said to be ‘vaulting payments’ when they contract with a partner, which stores sensitive cardholder data securely and provid...

What is a Universal Payment Vault? A payment vault is a storage facility where merchants securely manage customer payment details, and transmit them to payment partn...

Estimates suggest that somewhere between 36% and 50% of all transactions worldwide are now completed digitally. While this may not come as a surprise to many, what m...

Merchants strive to have a seamlessly integrated payment flow for customers. From the outside looking in, many may assume that this is achievable through a light and...

Frictionless payments offer the least amount of effort to get a transaction closed. There is no universally accepted definition of a frictionless payment, it is more...

Why Does 3D-Secure Matter? 3D Secure (3DS) provides an additional layer of security for online transactions, adding an identity confirmation partner to the standard ...

Merchants, especially online, have no choice but to contract with at least one payment service provider (PSP) to ensure they can execute transactions with credit car...

In any subscription business, there is inevitably churn - subscribers who end their contract and move on. There is, however, a difference between those who choose to...

In the first four posts of this five-part series, we covered the rules of payment processing for high risk merchants, what causes processors to shut down merchants, ...

Sophisticated high-risk merchants understand that de-risking their payments operations can truly be a game changer for their business. They see that not only is it i...

As a high-risk merchant, you know that hedging your risks can make it easier for your business to remain operational. One important way to achieve this when using a ...

Why it’s Crucial to Constantly Improve Payments Performance For any business, revenue growth is key to continued development and opportunity. And revenue growth can ...

Operating as a high-risk merchant, one of the most feared experiences is getting shut down. Even the looming threat of this happening is enough to keep many merchant...

This is blog post one of a five-part series on the ins and outs of high-risk merchants and high-risk payment processing.

How Credit and Debit Cards Compare The fundamental difference between a credit and debit card is whose money is being used in the transaction: with a credit card, th...